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She was a force for good whose legacy will be felt for years to come — Governor Mario Cuomo

Associate Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam, the first African-American woman to be appointed to New York’s Court of Appeals, was found dead on Wednesday in New York’s Hudson River.

Abdus-Salaam also became the first female Muslim to serve as a U.S. judge when she joined the New York State Supreme Court in 1994.

According to the BBC News, police first learned the judge was missing after her husband made a call Wednesday. Officers with the New York Police Department’s Harbor Unit responded to a report of a person floating by the shore in Upper Manhattan. Judge Abdus-Salaam, 65, was pronounced dead by paramedics shortly after 2 p.m.